In a device-to-device (Device to Device, D2D) communication scenario, user equipment may use another user equipment, in addition to a network side device (for example, a base station), to access a network. In this process, user equipment that provides a network access function for the another user equipment is a first device, for example, a high-capability device such as a smartphone; and user equipment that accesses the network by using the first device is a second device, for example, a low-capability device such as a wearable device.
In a communication process, when the first device does not perform service transmission or receiving, the first device is in a sleep (Idle) state. When the network side device needs to send a service to the first device in the idle state, the network side device needs to send a paging message to page the first device. The first device cyclically awakes, receives the paging message, and determines, according to the paging message, whether the network side device is paging the first device. In the paging process, the first device first decodes a paging control channel (Paging Control Channel, PCCH), so as to determine whether there is an indication of the paging message in the PCCH. If there is no indication of the paging message in the PCCH, the first device continues sleeping, or if there is an indication of the paging message in the PCCH, the first device receives a paging message of a designated location, that is, a paging channel (Paging Channel, PCH), further decodes the PCH, and checks whether there is an identity (Identity, ID) of the first device in the PCH; and if there is no identity of the first device in the PCH, the first device continues sleeping, or if there is an identity of the first device in the PCH, the first device accesses the network.
The foregoing paging method is a method for paging the first device by the network side device. However, in addition to the first device, the second device further needs to be paged. For example, the network side device pages the second device, or the first device pages the second device. Therefore, a manner of paging the second device is a problem that urgently needs to be resolved in the industry.